A conference lets a number of users exchange information online. You can send a message to a conference just as you would send a message to another user. You can also open a conference and read the messages posted there by others. When a conference contains unread mail, its icon is flagged and it displays the number of unread items that are inside.

Conferences can be created by your administrator, or by yourself or other users. On your Desktop, you will only see those conferences which you have created or placed there, or of which you are a member. You can also see any subconferences within a conference of which you are a member. If there is another conference that you want to see on your Desktop, ask the conference owner to make you a member.

Note

If your organization has used FirstClass prior to version 12.0, you may have a Conferences container on your Desktop, containing public conferences. Clicking the Conferences application button on the navigation bar opens this container and hides all objects in the tree view that aren't conferences.

The conference owner determines what you can do in a conference. For example, you may only be able to read messages in a conference that covers personnel policies, but be able to send messages to a conference that deals with a project that you are working on. In this case, the personnel conference serves as a way to broadcast information. The project conference lets everyone involved in the project discuss it.

If you simply reply to a message in a conference without specifying recipients, the reply is sent to the conference's default recipients.

To reply to just the conference that contains a message, choose Message > Reply Special > Reply to Conference with the message selected or open. To quote the whole message, choose Message > Reply Special > Reply to Conference with Quote.

To reply so that the reply appears to come from the conference itself, choose Message > Reply Special > Reply from Conference with the message selected or open. To quote the whole message, choose Reply > Reply Special > Reply from Conference with Quote.

A conference may be moderated. This means that either all messages sent to the conference, or messages with attachments, cannot be read until a moderator opens and approves them. Unapproved messages appear in italics in the list of conference items.

Only someone given permission to act as moderator for a conference can approve messages.

If You just want to create a simple shared area, you can create a workspace instead. Creating a workgroup is more straightforward than creating a conference. The tradeoff is that you have more control over conference behavior.

You can create conferences just as your administrator does. If you have trouble getting your conferences to work as you expect, contact your administrator.

We recommend that you select "Do not publish in Directory", so that your conference isn't in the Directory. This lets you name the conference whatever you want, without worrying about finding a unique name, and prevents users who shouldn't be seeing your conference from knowing about it.

If the conference Permissions form is still open, you can click Members instead.

3 Click Add Member.

Shortcut

With the members list open, you can open a list of users, such as the Directory, select users, and drag them to the members list. You can also select a plain text list of user names (one per line) and drag them.

4 Select the user.

To see a selected member's profile, click Profile.

To remove a selected member, click Remove Member.

Tip

You can click the column headings in the members list to sort the list, just as you can in other lists. This lets you display the member names in alphabetical order.

Setting up mail handling rules for your conferences

You can set up mail rules that tell FirstClass how to handle mail received by a conference.

Providing information about your conferences

To provide other users with information about a conference:

1 Choose Collaborate > Permissions with the conference open or selected.

You can create rules that import items from Internet RSS feeds into conferences. FirstClass checks for new items in these feeds on a regular basis. For each new item that it finds, it sends a message to the conference with an embedded link to the feed item.

When you subscribe a conference to a mailing list, messages sent to the mailing list will appear in the conference.

Each mailing list has its own instructions for subscribing. In some cases, you send a subscription request and the mailing list returns a reply saying the conference is subscribed. In other cases, you must respond to the mailing list's reply before the conference is subscribed.

To subscribe a conference to a mailing list, send the subscription request, as instructed by the mailing list, from the conference.

If you need to respond to this reply, reply from the conference.

Writing to mailing lists from conferences

Some mailing lists let anyone write to them. In this case, you and others using a conference can just send messages to the mailing lists, or respond to mailing list messages in a conference.

Other mailing lists only let registered users write to them. These mailing lists consider the actual conference to be the registered user, not you or others using the conference. This means that you cannot send messages directly to a mailing list, or respond to mailing list messages directly from the conference. To write to these mailing lists, you must send the message from the conference.

Sending commands to mailing lists

As well as sending messages to mailing lists, you can send commands such as help commands or requests for information about who is subscribed. These commands must also be sent from the conference.